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How sure can you be that the font you specify will be present on the end user's machine? This is the latest snapshot of the of the Code Style Unix font survey and should give you greater confidence in selecting a font.

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The most common Linux fonts

The most common font reported on Linux systems is the cursive font URW Chancery L at 97% frequency, followed by geometric sans serif URW Gothic L and serif font Century Schoolbook L. The serif font URW Bookman L and monospace font Nimbus Mono L complete the 5 most common Linux fonts at 95% frequency.

The new Web safe fonts

Linux fonts are not commonly regarded as Web safe and tend to be overlooked in standard font stacks. However, the 11 most common Linux fonts are available on 90% of distributions, far more common than typical Microsoft and Mac fallback font families.

Most common fonts on Unix family systems to 6 February 2010
Font name Installed (%) Sample Image
URW Chancery L 96.57% 96.57% Sample Image
URW Gothic L 96.26% 96.26% Sample Image
Century Schoolbook L 95.95% 95.95% Sample Image
URW Bookman L 95.64% 95.64% Sample Image
Nimbus Mono L 95.33% 95.33% Sample Image
URW Palladio L 94.39% 94.39% Sample Image
DejaVu Sans Mono 93.81% 93.81% Sample Image
Nimbus Sans L 93.22% 93.22% Sample Image
Nimbus Roman No9 L 90.97% 90.97% Sample Image
Bitstream Charter 90.71% 90.71% Sample Image
DejaVu Sans 90.68% 90.68% Sample Image
DejaVu Sans Light 88.41% 88.41% Sample  
DejaVu Serif 85.59% 85.59% Sample Image
Courier 10 Pitch 84.06% 84.06% Sample  
Bitstream Vera Sans Mono 83.49% 83.49% Sample Image
Bitstream Vera Sans 82.24% 82.24% Sample Image
DejaVu Sans Condensed 80.97% 80.97% Sample  
DejaVu Serif Condensed 80.53% 80.53% Sample  
Lucida Bright 77.87% 77.87% Sample Image
Lucida Sans 77.87% 77.87% Sample Image
Lucida Sans Typewriter 77.87% 77.87% Sample Image
Bitstream Vera Serif 74.45% 74.45% Sample Image
FreeMono 73.31% 73.31% Sample Image
FreeSerif 73.31% 73.31% Sample Image
Liberation Mono 73.01% 73.01% Sample  
Liberation Serif 73.01% 73.01% Sample  
FreeSans 72.46% 72.46% Sample Image
Liberation Sans 72.12% 72.12% Sample  
Arial 67.29% 67.29% Sample Image
Courier New 66.36% 66.36% Sample  
Times New Roman 63.86% 63.86% Sample  
Verdana 61.99% 61.99% Sample  
Arial Black 61.37% 61.37% Sample  
Georgia 60.75% 60.75% Sample  
Trebuchet MS 60.44% 60.44% Sample  
Comic Sans MS 59.81% 59.81% Sample  
Impact 59.81% 59.81% Sample  
Electron 59.42% 59.42% Sample  
Metal 59.42% 59.42% Sample  
Nice 59.42% 59.42% Sample  

These are only the top forty fonts, see the full Linux and Unix font survey results (about 100 KB) for a complete listing.

Font survey statistics

These figures are the cumulative total of font survey submissions since January 2007. Older submissions are archived to maintain a 3 year rolling sample. The table shows the average submission rate and totals for each operating system, and the the date the applet-based survey was introduced.

Survey Windows Mac Linux
Submissions per week 11 2 2
Total submissions 2050 355 321
Survey applet from 21 April 2007 12 May 2007 21 February 2009
Fonts surveyed 281 117 102

Font stacks for print style sheets

Our main interest is to build reliable font stacks for screen rendering, but CSS allows us to specify a different font stack to print Web pages. The most reliable way to apply print media style sheets is to use the media attribute on the style sheet link element. The selectors you choose and font-family declarations you add to this style sheet will only apply when the page is printed.

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
      href="/styles/print.css" media="print" />
    

What font combinations would you choose for print? Use the font stack builder to create a print font stack and submit your ideas.

CSS font family resources

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